The underlying premise of the CW’s “Emily Owens M.D.” is, life is like high school. Specifically, life for young doctors in hospitals is like high school. The central geeky high schooler is played by Mamie Gummer, veteran of “Stop Loss” and other films and daughter of Meryl Streep.

Gummer plays a first year surgical intern at the fictional Denver Memorial Hospital, shot in Vancouver. The mountains and access to nature make it a good substitute for Denver, according to executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman. Maybe if Denver had the kind of tax credits for film production that so many other U.S. cities have, it would have been able to star as itself.

The show is geared to young (mostly female) viewers and succeeds at tapping into that audience’s overriding fear of nerdiness. What does it tell us about surgical interns? Hey, it’s a tv show.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.